Contact SELF via e-mail, or tweet them your thoughts! Let them know that there’s no such thing as a “best body”!

Our Gallery of Offenders is for educational purposes, and to give our web site visitors the chance to contact media-makers directly to tell them what they think. The items are mostly chosen from the U.S. mainstream media available in the last year, using an independent process. We are never making fun of models/actors themselves, but the environment they exist within. Please submit your picks on our Contact page.

archive: SELF’s Dream Body Expectations are a Nightmare

Questions to Consider:

What do you think about SELF’s claim that the athletes in its August issue have the “best bodies in the world”?

How does SELF’s article make you feel? What is it trying to get you to do?

What We Think:

SELF magazine’s August issue has decided to showcase what they call the “best bodies in the world.” Their main article features a supermodel and her fitness routine, which is then followed up with blurbs from six professional athletes and a challenge urging women to lose weight. While we have nothing but respect for people who exercise regularly, do sports, or rock muscles, it’s not right to claim that one type of body is “better” than another. Most simply don’t have the luxury or the desire to take up veganism or work out for hours on end, and expecting women to alter their lifestyles in order to obtain what SELF considers to be an “oh-yeah butt” is totally ridiculous! It’s important to remember that the women selected to give advice are all on national teams. They spend “double-digit hours…each week” training. Thinking that all women should look like them is nowhere near realistic! SELF has done a disservice to these world-class athletes by mentioning their accomplishments so briefly and focusing almost entirely on their looks. And this magazine has wronged its readers, who come in all shapes and sizes, and who certainly don’t deserve to be told that they are less for being themselves. — Kendra De Nike

talfonso on 08-07-2015

Malina on 12-01-2015

I agree, it's unfair for this magazine to advertise an idea of a "best body" when one factors in how the bodies chosen essentially belong to athletes whose careers depend on maintaining such a fit physique.

Being a professional athlete means that instead of sitting in a vehicle before and after sitting in an office for 8 hours a day, and wondering where you're going to find the time to do anything other than sit for the rest of the day; these athletes are getting PAID to do the opposite. Their lifestyles consist of rigorous physical training, strict dietary discipline, and participating in sports for a living. Exercise and nutrition IS their JOB.

That being said, if (like a majority of the population), your own job is not modeling or professional athleticism, then don't worry. Thankfully, it's against the law for a boss to fire someone, based on weight gain and muscle tone.

Reading the headline at the bottom of the ad that says "115 Ways To Win Your Workout" has now left me with the visual of a bunch of businessmen (and women) working hard at the office for an opportunity to be selected as the winner who gets to take a day off from work, to focus on health via a paid day at the gym. As silly as that visual is, I find it a better idea than marketing athletic bodies as best suited for a 9-5 non-athlete.

Malina on 12-01-2015

So I tried messaging Self Magazine, yet my message wouldn't go through because the capcha was supposedly incorrect (every time). If anyone can get this message through to them for me (or knows how to get through their capcha), I'd truly appreciate it.

Message to Self:

I realize that your magazine has a focus on health and nutrition for body image. That being said, I truly hope that you can be more mindful of what is and isn't attainable for your readers.

By writing an article claiming that the best bodies in the world come from professional athletes, you have totally devalued all of the women who will never have a body that looks anything close to that of a professional athlete.

By ignoring the fact that many of your readers work sedentary careers 40 hours per week (therefore, do not have the time to workout nearly as much as a pro-athlete), Self comes across as presumptuously sadistic and categorically out of touch with the realities of your working class demographic.

There are plenty of people on this planet who are able to be healthfully fit, in lieu of a 40 hour work week; and have the best bodies of their entire lives, yet still do not (and will not) look anything like your own interpretation of the "best bodies in the world."

This is reality. And the only thing wrong with such a reality is that a magazine such as Self would use this difference in body types/career paths as a way to make their readers feel less beautiful and more dependent on the unrealistic articles being promoted and sold in the guise of fitness/self-help.

What would really help your readers to actually want to continue reading your magazine, would be less self-sabotaging and more pieces that focus on realistic goals and the empowerment of diverse ideals of beauty.

We can't all be professional athletes, so please stop writing articles that shame and humiliate us for having different lifestyles and body types.

Rosie on 05-17-2016

I used to love Self Magazine, it was a magazine I would subscribe to every year and then they started focusing on what this article states instead of loving ourselves for who we are and helping us gain self confidence. I decided then and there not to renew my subscription.

Marcella Raimondo on 07-04-2016

So this article is troubling in many ways. Yes these folks are athletes, yet there is a privilege to have personal trainers, time and access and money to make so many choices around food and specialized food. I also think we need to be careful how we use the word athlete. Athletes rest and eat lots of food!! Double digit exercise hours and food restriction are red flags for eating disorders. As a psychologist who specializes in eating disorders, I have HUGE concerns for these types of behaviors and how they are displayed as recommendations for folks to follow.